


Please mind the gap (between each beat)

by wawalux



Series: More words than work [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Foggy Nelson, Bisexual Foggy Nelson, Boys In Love, Brotherly Love, Concussions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fear, Fights, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Head Injury, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Hurt, Hurt Foggy Nelson, Hurt Matt Murdock, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Injury Recovery, Late Night Conversations, Love, M/M, Male Friendship, Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson Friendship, POV Matt Murdock, Post-Concussion Syndrome, Protective Foggy Nelson, Recovery, Romantic Friendship, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26250751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wawalux/pseuds/wawalux
Summary: Tonight Matt shouldn’t be here. There’s a small lump at the base of his skull, one that makes the hair near his neck unable to settle and caked blood crackle with every twitch of his head as he listens. It’s not a concussion. It’s not. It’s just that Matt’s senses sometimes spazz-out a little, make the information flurry, white snowflakes sparking delicately in the dark. Fizzy, a little like bubbles in a drink, all hurrying to reach the same end, disorderly and untamed. Matt can handle it he just…needs a second. Let it all sit and settle. Matt just needs one second to sit and settle.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: More words than work [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888111
Comments: 4
Kudos: 89





	Please mind the gap (between each beat)

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is set somewhere after season 2. Mostly it's set in my hours of procrastination while I let the work pile up. Ah well, hope you enjoy!

It’s not the way it sounds. Although that is soothing, lulling, like the rain used to be, before. The crash landing of each drop blurred into a whoosh of white noise that fit him like static on a tv screen, like two hands holding his ears shut. But not completely, just enough to drown out the everyday, to turn it down a little, make it play at a different key, tamer, more approachable. No, it’s not the way it sounds.

And it’s not its warmth either, although Matt can feel it from here. It’s just an echo, really, a hint, a promise of heat, hiding, behind skin, behind clothes, behind walls, one that makes him edge closer. It pulses white hot through each layer, reaches his mind like a star, glows…it’s a sun. It’s his sun. Matt knows that if he were ever to touch it, he’d use the back of his hands to appreciate each tremor, the small hairs on the ridge of his bruised knuckles swaying at the delicate bounce, savoring the force behind each contraction, each stretch of fiber.

No. It’s how constant it is. It’s there, like his favorite star, there, if Matt chooses to find it, to bear the passage of the cloud, to look beyond the brightness of the everyday, to overlook the shadows cast by the shining of a moon. Matt knows it won’t always be there. Even the dullest stars burn out eventually. And this one, this one is so scalding that Matt thinks he can feel the exact shape and size of the black hole it will leave in its wake. Matt can’t see much, sometimes Matt can’t see at all, but this? This Matt chooses to look at until he has memorized each ray.

Tonight Matt shouldn’t be here. There’s a small lump at the base of his skull, one that makes the hair near his neck unable to settle and caked blood crackle with every twitch of his head as he listens. It’s not a concussion. It’s not. It’s just that Matt’s senses sometimes spazz-out a little, make the information flurry, white snowflakes sparking delicately in the dark. Fizzy, a little like bubbles in a drink, all hurrying to reach the same end, disorderly and untamed. Matt can handle it he just…needs a second. Let it all sit and settle. Matt just needs one second to sit and settle.

Foggy shifts in his sleep and emits a short huff of air as he relaxes back down. Matt feels it as it shapes its way out of his lungs like they are balloons cradled in the palms of his hands. His tongue darts out to try and snatch a sample of it, but he can’t, not quite. Still, leftovers of Foggy creep between the chapped skin of his lips and give Matt a hint, not enough, not by far, but a little. Matt settles lower into his crouch, feels the ache in his thighs and the cold of the fire-escape seep through his boots, places a steadying hand against the wall, and listens. Foggy’s heart beats steady and slow and Matt lets it talk. He uses both ears and a hand, he doesn’t interrupt, and he wonders, but doesn’t ask (he could never ask) about the stories jammed between each untidy beat.

Would Foggy answer if he called? Would Foggy care? Or would he disappear, like that shooting star that turned out to be an airplane, erasing his wishes before they left his lips?

There’s a certain floating quality that is tainting the corners of his periphery now. It’s a little fluffy, but also light, hazy. It makes thoughts blur like a wrong pair of glasses. Matt’s senses try to compensate, and sounds and smell now reach him in waves, some too loud, some too strong, some like they don’t quite mean to. The fire escape is there and then it’s not, even though Matt can feel it, a steady pressure of steel unyielding against the soles of his boots. It’s just that gravity can’t quite figure out how strongly it wants to pull. Matt wishes it would make up its mind already as he sways and flies a little too – no, no, not fly. He is still there, two feet and two hands on the floor. Steel bites greedily at every inch Matt gives him, branding Matt with tattoos of ice, claiming him like he is his. Matt tries to fight, tries to stand up, but up stops being a direction and he sinks faster than quicksand. The quiet is the last thing he hears, feels, tastes, sees and Matt knows in that moment the exact shape that empty takes in a world without Foggy.

*

_Get up, Matty._

Stick’s commands are ingrained deeper than muscle memory and no amount of sass, will or pain will ever be enough for him to resist them. Matt searches for his legs and can’t quite find himself.

_Come on Matty, get to work._

His dad’s voice is gentler, brushes him at the nape of his neck, calloused hands that bruise and split like they can punch the world into shape, make it yield and stay down until Matt’s future can stand on its own two feet. But Matt is too lost and even as he grasps at the shadow of heat left by his father’s touch, he finds it was never there at all. Matt floats away just as fast.

_Matthew._

Elektra always knew how to slip in between. Matt wants to spar, counterstrike, shut himself tighter until there are no gaps in his defense. And still that one word, that drawl, a command and a dare in one, she makes him want to reach for his tie to loosen it. Elektra knows how to spill into him until he feels too tight in his skin, she knows how to seduce the devil, how to discipline the flames into gentle licks of passion and power as he steps to join her in hell. Even now Matt wants to fight as he strides towards her, scream as he pulls her closer and throw that punch, the one that she will dodge and turn into a cradle, an iron-tight grip that begs to never let go.

Elektra is not enough now. Matt let’s her voice flutter in his chest and sets it loose before he follows.

_Matthew._

Father Lantom pulls like his conscience. _Forgive me father for I have sinned_ , Matt mumbles it into a sigh through lips that won’t part. He waits for an answer, a question. Matt needs the absolution, the permission from God to put the weight down. He wants the forgiveness for the painted half-truths. The raw pleasure of being the devil, the rush that he gets when blood drips gently from his knuckles, the warmth of it…that, he’ll have to carry with him, his price for being a soldier.

There’s a warm quality to the air, one that curls onto Matt’s tongue and settles deep in his chest. A flavor, familiar but just out of reach, calls him home. The sounds of it is missing, it’s the sound that Matt wants. Quiet is a shade of black that makes Matt miss the fire. Quiet is the nothing that holds Matt in its grasp.

*

“Matt? You back with us?”

Matt crash-lands into his body and the impact is so jarring that he wonders if he was actually lost in space. He misses the weightlessness instantly, fingers gripping at the fabric, nails scratching as they desperately search for purchase. His voice is lost somewhere underneath his gut that has lodged itself firmly around his Adam’s apple and bobs along, up and down, every time he tries to swallow. His senses are spinning faster than a hamster’s wheel. He feels blankets stuffed around every inch of his body, the trapped heat burning his skin crisp as charcoal, residues of adrenaline and blood and sweat seeping in rivulets of steam from the shallow air currents in between.

“Matt?”

Steady pressure on his sternum, large fingers pressing stronger than gravity, a touch that grounds him. The bubble in the level goes left and right, finds its center and flips. Matt’s head raises up, his gut climbs higher and his insides spew out faster than his lips can open. Matt chokes on open-mouthed lungsful of air, nostrils lost in the taste of hot bile. The hands move to his shoulders, find bare skin under the prickling of wool and cotton, help Matt tip to the side so that he can empty outside of his own mouth. Matt feels that pulse tap him gently through the pads of the fingers on his back, searches for the sound of that heart that wants to speak. But noise is still lost, like a selfish door banging in the wind, it whispers selected fragments in Matt’s ear, then shuts off.

His insides crawl back down his throat and Matt lies back, an apology half formed between his slack lips. He pushes it through, whispered sorrys that taste like vomit and only reach him in stops and starts. The hand slaps them back into his mouth with the wipe of a paper tissue that smells like artificial eucalyptus. Matt doesn’t stop, even when he needs to fill his lungs, he lets air murmur in through his lips shaped like the word, his conscience stubborn and unrelenting.

“Shut up before you hurt yourself.”

Foggy’s voice is layered with a thousand emotions that blend into one another like a rainbow. Matt’s blood is trapped under his fingernails and his eyes itch to close. Matt can feel the pulse in his heavy eyelids, robbed sleep under the t-shirt and the disappointment that Foggy now wears just for Matt. It pinches Foggy’s eyebrows and lowers the tone, voids the gentleness from each touch. He wishes Foggy would punch him, beat Matt to a pulp, so that he could wield the pain into something useful, something that wouldn’t leave the constant ache at the base of his stomach.

Matt’s eyelids snap open and it’s an instinct, there is nothing to see. But still the flutter registers in Foggy’s pulse, makes his veins inch open just a crack, like they want to sing in relief but then remember they are not supposed to care. Matt lets that pulse ground him, finds the heart and nestles in the undiluted purity of the noise this close. Wishes, once again, that he could hold it next to his ear.

Foggy’s stance is brimming with questions that get stuck in that half-breath before Foggy speaks. Matt tidies his senses as he lies, categorizes the onslaught into ins and outs, discards the leftovers, finds gravity and sets it straight. He toys with the blanket on his lap and the warmth that is just not enough when Foggy is so far. He tries to sit up, sniffs and shudders in aftershock, and each move jolts Foggy like a bolt. Foggy paces to the window, to the table, to the kitchen, and right back, casting furtive glances in Matt’s direction, like he can’t quite believe that he is really there. Questions pile up until Foggy is full to the brim, each footstep making the dome tremble. Matt wishes he could take a sip, a careful sip with his lips on the glass and the glass on the table, level him out before the surface tension splits and the ambush spills out of him. Matt lets him walk, lets his eyes close and the dark is just the same, filled with Foggy’s footsteps ricocheting into the space until the noise tells him exactly where he is, and where Foggy isn’t. He thinks he hears the drop that trips the tsunami before it hits.

“So, you want to tell me why I found you passed out on my fire-escape covered in blood?”

It’s a drop, just one drop of Foggy’s anger. The rest of the ocean is contained, and still Matt struggles to swim, goes under, forgets how to breathe.

“You had a concussion Matt, a freaking concussion! And near hypothermia, do you realize how long it was before I found you and had the sense to haul your sorry ass inside?”

Drip, drip, drip. Drowning can be so slow when each drop hits his lung with such precision. Matt traces each blow, the sting and sear. Bites his lip to stifle the pain.

“What are you even doing here Matt?! You said we were over, you don’t want to do this anymore, you don’t want us to be friends!”

Foggy sags into a chair, sprawls more sloppily than his pulse, and runs a hand through his hair. Matt can hear the stubble rasp against his palm as Foggy buries his face in his hands, rubs his eyes. When he sighs, Matt can taste it. He feels greedy when he licks Foggy’s smell off his lips, when he takes that too.

“I’m sorry, Foggy.”

Matt says it again, it’s all he can say when Foggy is right, so right. Matt shouldn’t have come, he shouldn’t have got caught, Foggy shouldn’t…he shouldn’t be his friend.

“You’re sorry?! What for Matt? What was it this time? A gun? A baseball-bat? A space-ship?”

Foggy spits the words out, coats them in venom, makes sure Matt feels exactly how stupid he was, feels the sting as they whip him.

“Crowbar,” he admits, remembering how it soared in a perfect arc before it hit him, how Matt braced himself for the blow so that he could take out the gun that would’ve have ended him once and for all. Foggy whistles a sigh that could be impressed or terrified, Matt can’t tell, not when Foggy’s heart is doing summersaults in his chest.

“A crowbar, of course,” he mutters to himself, “you are going to kill yourself Matt, you know that right?”

Matt purses his lips, riles against the instinct to fight back, pushes the devil down, lower, when he rises to the challenge. Then he says it anyways, because he can’t not say it, there is a right in his mission, a goodness that shouldn’t be ignored, that wants to be acknowledged, even if just for himself.

“I can’t stop Foggy,” and then he adds for good measure, “I’m fine.”

Foggy erupts like a volcano, but it’s not streams of lava from one crater, it’s that volcano that he studied in school, the one that lets the pressure build and build until the lava skitters out like shrapnel in the explosion. He shoots up, blood boiling, takes a step and clenches his fists, chokes out an indignant half-roar. Matt feels the tendons in Foggy’s hand squeak from the effort as he braces for the punch that doesn’t come. Foggy deflates faster than he stood, falls back into his seat, a new weight on his shoulders, one burdened with all the words he didn’t say. Matt feels it too, droops lower on the couch, head dipping in defeat.

Heavy silence stretches like a cat and Matt waits for the inevitable goodbye, the one he can survive, the one Stick taught him to seek. But he can’t. He can’t.

“I can’t bury you Matt, I can’t,” Foggy’s voice is salty with tears, “I can’t…I can’t do this anymore.”

He stands in a symphony of creaking joints but it’s his heart that Matt focuses on, the way it beats like it doubled in size, like the blood got stuck. It’s heavy, too heavy. Matt follows it as it leads Foggy to the bedroom, muted when the door slams, loses it in the discording harmony of springs as Foggy lies on his bed. It’s when Foggy stills that Matt hears it loudest, despite the obstacles in between, how it beats out of tune because Matt broke it. He broke his North and somehow, he died too.

Standing up is not an option but it’s also the only one. Matt will crawl if he has to. He raises himself one leg at the time, swallows hard against the bile that splashes the back of his throat when the floor feels like the ceiling. Cold air smacks his bare skin as the blankets knot themselves at his feet, tripping him up, an extra obstacle in an already impossible trek. He takes two steps and stumbles into the coffee table he forgot to sense. Matt grunts, shins singing from the blow, uses the pain to remember where his legs are, where down is. The dizziness is beyond, beyond anything, it feels like someone has taken his brain and cut it loose so its free to roll and bounce and swerve its way around his skull. He finds himself on all fours and he isn’t sure if he tripped or if he ever got up at all. Time has stopped being fluid, skipping ahead and then reversing in order, Matt loses some of it as he goes.

“Matt, what the hell are you doing?!”

Matt didn’t hear the door open, or the footsteps, or the heat. He doesn’t know how he could’ve missed it, Foggy’s so bright it makes Matt’s blindness feel like a necessary compensation. He is crouched, right there, his foot nudging against Matt’s fingertips, disapproval rolling off his skin.

Matt stretches out a hand, relinquishes part of his balance, searches, blind until Foggy’s warm grasp steadies the spin of the earth and clutches at his fingers. Matt tugs, himself or Foggy or both, he doesn’t know, lands in a heap against Foggy’s chest with his ear right where he needs it to be, an inch away from his sun. Foggy’s startled arms catch him before he can slide back into the ground, muscles tense from the effort, pulse fueling his surprise.

“Jeez, you’re heavy,” Foggy huffs, but doesn’t let go, and Matt latches on with his arms too, let’s his palms rest on Foggy’s chest, traces the heat from the neck to its center.

“Foggy,” he rasps, and Foggy’s heart beats an echo back into his ear. Foggy hunches back until he is sitting next to Matt on the floor, Matt who is still nestling in his chest like he can’t let go.

“Please,” Matt begs, and he doesn’t know for what. For forgiveness, for another chance, for Foggy back, for everything, everything. Foggy stays quiet while his blood moves like a hurricane and Matt stirs it with the tips of his fingers as he traces the outline of his chest.

“Please,” Matt says again, burrowing his face in Foggy’s neck, right by the carotid, feeling it nudge against the tip of his nose with every beat. Matt suffocates in the smell of Foggy.

“Matt,” Foggy’s voice is a rasp, raw, gravelly, broken. There’s a trace of the old Foggy, but most of it it’s new Foggy, disappointed Foggy, worried Foggy. Matt focuses on the sound of his name before it leaves Foggy’s chest, listens to the lungs squeeze it out and the tongue slap it into shape.

Matt moves a hand to the back of Foggy’s neck, tightens his fingers on the hem of his shirt, holds him in place while he murmurs ‘please’ right into his chest. Foggy folds like a bad hand at poker, smacks down all at once, tightens his arms and speaks through a sigh of defeat.

“Ugh Matt, you are still kind of bloody,” he arches his neck as if to pull away. Matt feels the residual blood in that thin layer that yanks when he moves, the swipes of a wet rag tattooed on his skin in the smell of chlorine and copper from Foggy’s pipes.

“Not my fault you didn’t do a very good job,” Matt laughs in relief.

“You kidding me? Should’ve dragged your stupid ass to the hospital.”

“You called Claire?” Matt guesses. He searches for her smell in the dry air of the apartment, finds dust and leftover garlic shrimp in polyester containers, the hum of the aged radiator, currents of city air pressing through the gaps in the insulation. The pounding in his temples makes the rest invisible.

“Yes, but it was mostly cos she is smoking hot and I wanted to hear her voice, don’t get any ideas,” a double thump in the cave of Foggy’s chest calls his bluff. Matt’s lips curl into a smile.

“Thank you, Foggy,” Matt tilts his head up, aims it to Foggy’s face, eyes wide to mirror the sincerity in his tone.

“Yeah well, maybe next time you could find a less terrifying way to slink back into my life,” Foggy’s face darts down and shoots away again, not looking at Matt, “like say, the front door maybe?”

Matt purrs into his chest, a small, contented sigh.

“I mean I guess I get it, who could get enough of me? I’m delicious,” Foggy’s tone is light, all Foggy, jovial and familiar, it hums through Matt like a summer breeze, warms him to the tips of his toes.

Matt forces out a laugh, pushes the conversation into a joke, “You are right, I couldn’t resist.” Foggy doesn’t know just how much.

He listens to Foggy’s heart stutter, a blush tiptoe around his face and it’s a question that Matt can’t bring himself to ask. Foggy’s arms speak for them both, cage Matt, a little too close, and it’s a reassurance that is loud, etched like this on Matt’s skin. Matt relaxes and feels more liquid than solid, coats them both in residual blood that Foggy accepts as its own.

Foggy glows bright and Matt shuts his eyes, sees him anyways, through the clouds and the layers and the night. He listens to the only sound that matters, beating right into his ear, and doesn’t let go. Soft keening sounds build in the back of his throat, but he traps them, for Foggy’s sake, for his own. The insurmountable abyss between their lips will remain untouched tonight. Another night, maybe, with more courage and less hurt.

Matt hangs onto Foggy like he can force him to never let him go. Even when Matt turns away, even when Matt disappoints, even though Matt is not enough. Foggy lets him, tangles himself in Matt and stays on the cold hardwood floor, stays like he knows just how much Matt needs him. And it’s enough. For now, it’s everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I love those two, just can't get enough of them.
> 
> Thanks for reading, really <3


End file.
